150 Word Review: 'The Grapes Of Wrath' (1940)
The struggle was, and is, real
There's a scene in John Ford's soulful 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-winning working-class epic The Grapes of Wrath that is as tense as any that has come out this year: the Joad family escapes a prison-like work camp under cover of darkness in their sputtering jalopy. Their son Tom, played by a handsome and angry Henry Fonda, is on the run after killing a union-buster in self-defense and hides under a mattress in the back of the truck.
The Joads are forced off their Oklahoma farm by the bank and gamble everything on a cross-country journey to California, where they're promised plentiful jobs, but there aren't any. The Great Depression was an economic horror caused by rich, greedy men.
Jane Darwell won a best supporting Oscar for her role as Ma Joad, matriarch. She is a powerhouse—a simple woman trying to keep her family together during hard times.
Love this film and your brief review, John. Scarily, we're likely only at the beginning of Grapes 2.0. It may get much, much worse. Greed was a big contributor to the collapse a century ago, but this time malice is an equal cause.
I recently watched this film again and what I noticed this time is Tom Joad was a killer just getting out of prison when he joined his family on the road to California. He continued to be a hothead, skipped town so he already was in violation of his parole, and then he killed another man in a rage. He endangers his family, makes terrible decisions but comes out looking like a saint. Any thoughts?